When You're Afraid or Stuck On Picking A Niche

Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy and dreams meet reality. My name is Julie and I explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories. It's about the grit it takes to get there. Hey, everyone, this is Julie. Welcome back to Million Dollar Grit. I'm actually doing an episode today on your niche, and specifically the fact that I got called out for not having a really defined niche. And I wrote an email last week to my list and I got so much feedback from this email, I thought, okay, I need to do a. A deeper dive into this concept of niche and me getting called out about it and sort of what I'm. How I'm approaching niche as a personal brand, because I think this impacts a lot of people, whether you're at the beginning of your business or you're deep in it and you're considering a pivot. So first, let me kind of go back to where I got called out. It was in the nicest way possible. I was on an interview and she was saying, you know, about the market and the climate of the economy and how to stand out and the importance of niche. And I was talking very much about how important it is to have a clearly defined, specific niche and a transformational offer. And she said, well, but you kind of don't really have a specific niche. You know, you're not really following your own advice. And it was funny. I laughed. I was like, you're totally right. And I'm surprised that I'm not called out more for it. But I think that her comment was incomplete. And so I love telling this analogy, this story for people who come to me as new clients and they're worried about getting boxed in and they're worried about picking a niche that's too small. And so I like to use an outdoor farmer's market. So imagine you're on like an old New England green. There's a farmer's market and there are different spots in the market. Now you are a pumpkin gardener and you want to sell your goods and you have all kinds of pumpkin stuff, right? Pumpkin pie, pumpkin smelling candles, you sell canned pumpkin, you sell pumpkin seeds. When I ask you, hey, what's your niche? You say pumpkin, right? That's your niche. I'm a pumpkin farmer or a pumpkin gardener. Right. But when you go to the farmer's market, there's no pumpkin section for your tent, for your setup, for your Booth. Right. Why? Because the sections of the market are lining up the way customers think, not the way sellers think. And that's really important to note is that whether you're on an algorithm or whether you're being searched by Google or crawled by Google or by ChatGPT, all of those platforms are serving the way the customer thinks, not the way the seller thinks. And there's usually a disconnect there. We think, well, this is what I do. And, and always say, well, what does your customer think you do? What does Facebook think you do? What does Google think you do? You know, and you have to go from where the customer thinks. So at the farmer's market, the actual market is set up with four different areas. It's got the. The baked goods area, where all the breads and the pies and the cookies and all of those things are. It's got the meats area, it's got the veggies and fruits area, and then it's got homemade goods. So if you think of a square green, you've got four different. You show up with your tent, your booth, where are you going to set up? You are not allowed to set up in the middle. You are not allowed to set up in between two tents. Right. You have to go to one particular section. So if you're just thinking, you know, pretty literally, you might be like, well, pumpkin is a vegetable or is it a fruit? I actually, I don't. I think it's a vegetable. I don't know. You might decide, okay, I'm gonna go head over to corner three, the veggie and fruit section. And why would you do that? Well, you would, because you're thinking to yourself, my niche is pumpkin. Again, you are thinking from your perspective. The problem is you're not actually selling raw pumpkins at your tent. And unless it's Halloween, people don't typically buy pumpkins at a farmer's market, again, unless it's Halloween. So you're like, well, I'll set up my canned pumpkin, since technically that's still a veggie or a fruit. Like that'll work. Or. Or I could do the seeds. Cause that's, you know, kind of food related. But again, what are the customers thinking when they head over to fruits and veggies? They're thinking fresh blueberries, they're thinking juicy red tomatoes. They're not thinking pumpkin in a can or roasted salted pumpkin seeds. So while you might get some sales, you're not going to get that much. So you're kind of left in a little Bit of a conundrum, because you have to choose to either focus on your pumpkin pies, which would put you in the baked goods section, or you have to focus on pumpkin candles. And that would put you in the homemade goods section. Right. Your other two goods, which are your canned pumpkin and your seeds, don't really fit at this farmer's market. And you just have to be okay with that. So if I were trying to focus on my niche, I would choose the baked goods section because my pumpkin pies are really freaking good. So I'm gonna go enter that market in the nich niche of homemade pumpkin pie. Okay? So I'm going to focus on my pies. I'm going to set up my booth, I'm going to set up my pies. My pies are going to be on that front table, right? That is what I'm going to focus on. Next to the front, to the pumpkin pies, I'm going to put canned pumpkin and I'm going to get creative and I'm going to wrap the cans or the jars of canned pumpkin in a wrap that has the recipe for the homemade pumpkin pie. Why? Because if people like pumpkin pie, they might also be like, well, I want to take some canned pumpkin home and recreate this at home, and then I will put the candles and the seeds in other places. Okay? So now the customers heading into that area of the market for baked goods are going to be interested in your pumpkin pie, right? So chances are, if you have samples out, people are going to like your pies. They will probably pick up your pies and they might also pick up some canned pumpkin, especially because. Because you thought about it and yeah, maybe you'll get, you'll sell a few candles or you'll sell a few seeds if you got some die hard pumpkin person. But those are going to be impulse purchases, right? Those are things that they're buying not because that's what they were searching for, but because that is what was there once they got into your tent. But you will sell so much more at this farmer's market. And if your pies happen to be the best pies out there, you're going to sell so much more. But that has required you to niche down into delicious homemade pumpkin pies. And you might start to get a little itchy and a little annoyed because what you really love to do is make candles. Or what you really love to do is make the pumpkin seeds. And you're not really like, the market is like telling you, like, that's not what they're excited about. And so you rub up against this like dissonance and this happens all the time in personal brands. And so I'm gonna like go out of this analogy now and talk about myself because I started in 2014, let's say about 10 years ago, and I was much more niched down. I focused on funnels. It is too broad today. Why? Because when I was out there in the marketplace, funnels was a corner of the market that was crowded, but there was still some spots, especially because I'm a woman and there were a lot of men in the space. And so there was a spot for me. But now it's not just a corner of the market. Funnels is an entire farmer's market in and of itself. And so now if you're entering in as a funnel builder now you're not going to a farmer's market that's talking about funnels and websites and social media and SEO. Now you're going to a funnel farmer's market. And now you've got book funnels and webinar funnels and low ticket fun, right? Like it's gotten. Or possibly you're going to, you know, a funnels farmers market that's like kartra and high level and click funnels. You see what I'm saying? So the market evolves. So I was super specific back then and it's too broad today. And so honestly, the reputation that I built 10 years ago, as I was building still works and pays off today. And sometimes, yeah, of course I get tired of being the funnel person. Like anybody who's really good at something will eventually kind of tire of the material. And I use the example of an artist or a piano player that like wants to play original content at a show, but like everyone just wants to hear Piano Man. This is the curse of being an expert is like you have moved way beyond where the average person is in the market. It takes a lot of discipline to just keep coming back. But the work that I did then is still paying off today. And people still find me and book consultations coaching because they need help with sales funnels. So if you are thinking about your niche today, the work you do today to build up what you're known for will pay off three, four, five, six, seven years down the road as the market matures and gets more crowded, you will still get that sort of real estate. That land that you claimed will still be yours as long as you stay relevant and as long as you stay visible and consistent and all that kind of stuff. So you do have to do that. It's not like it just lives on an infamy. But if you, let's say you build a YouTube channel about book funnels and you start doing that today and you really dominate that niche, that's going to pay off three, four, five years down the road, even if book funnels get far more crowded and competitive. Okay. So I still think that I really do get the benefit of what I did 10 years ago today. But I definitely am kind of Julie the niche list these days in my personal brand, right? So if you follow me, let's say you follow me on Facebook, for example, you might see posts about business, about funnels, about money, marketing, AI, productivity, my animals, my faith, cultural, like political hot takes. You might hear me talk about Disney World. There's a lot going on on my Facebook. Okay. Instagram, kind of similar. I try to keep my feed very business and like marketing related, but if you go on my stories, forget it. It's anybody's guess what you're gonna see. And so I try to keep my varying topics somewhat organized on different platforms, right. If you look at my email list, it's pretty business related. If you look at LinkedIn, it's very business related. If you head over to my Dandelion Report newsletter, it's all faith content. So I try to keep it somewhat organized, but there's exceptions to every rule. So I just wanna, I just wanna, you know, make that really clear. But here is the warning disclaimer that I wanna make if someone is watching me and saying, well, if Julie can do it, I can do it. I am being held back from my next level of financial growth and audience growth because I've chosen to be Julie the niche less. Okay? It is limiting my reach and it will limit my finances and I've chosen it willingly, voluntarily. And why? There's a couple reasons why. Number one, my current financial position is stable and that was a lot of hard work. I worked probably harder than four people combined for years. And so I'm benefiting from that today with a little bit more rest and reprieve. So that's the first thing. The second thing is the status of my companies. Both my companies are, are stable. So number one, Funnel Gorgeous, which I own 50% of, is clearly staying in its lane as a niche, right? And so in a way, it is affording me to be Julie the niche list. Right? Because Funnel Gorgeous is clearly in the lane of funnels and marketing and it hasn't left and it's got a lot of authority and Brand reputation there Digital insiders also has a reputation, a long standing business mastermind. And people still come to me for funnels and business coaching. And because I still talk about all of that stuff regularly, I still get followers even though I've started to sprinkle in other types of content. Okay, but here is something I want to remind everyone about and sort of what got missed in this comment that she made. Like you don't really follow your own advice. While my personal brand is, I'm making a deliberate choice to not be hyper niche. Whenever I create a course, a workshop or a class, I am hyper specific, painfully specific because I understand that you need to have a dialed in problem, big idea and solution. And most of my courses right now go under funnel Gorgeous. So you'll notice that they almost all release relate to marketing and business. Occasionally I slide into productivity, but they are for that exact niche. And you know, like, okay, if I am buying speed of right? It is the problem of I have to produce content and I can't write fast enough. If I am purchasing offer brand. The problem is I have an offer that is stale and boring, right? It's very, very clear. And so there's zero question what I'm teaching or why it's important. And so this actually allows the aud that's following me to pick and choose when to buy and when to pass by. Because there is a high degree of, of trust. So I think that, you know, that is sort of the nuanced answer to why are you Nicholas Ish? Because I'm not really. And why do you not follow your own advice? So the, the thing that I kind of want to leave everyone with is like, all right, let's say you are in a niche and you are feeling that like cognitive dissonance of like, well, this is what I'm known for, but it's not what I want to be known for. The three questions that I always ask are, number one, is the company that you're working on paying all the bills? If it is okay, great, then you have something stable that can pay your bills. Number two, is there a way that you can create an outlet for the new idea that doesn't slow down or cannibalize the main business? So for example, let's say I was, you know, I'm a business coach and I'm toying the idea of becoming a life coach, right? Can I start a newsletter, a substack, a podcast, something. It's an outlet. It's completely separate. It'll grow a separate audience that Audience will be segmented. Okay, and number three, are you prepared to spend money? Because when you start juggling multiple businesses, you need more money because you cannot multiply time. And so businesses run on two things, money and time. Money and time. So if you've got a business that's demanding a lot of your time, you're going to need significant money to buy back time or buy other people's time to, to, to get that off the ground. If you can answer those questions, yes, one of my companies is paying all the bills. I can create an outlet for the new idea that doesn't slow down the main business. And yes, I can spend money to compensate for the lack of time. Then you can proceed with building a second, third or fourth business with the current one that you have. However, you will have to make choices. And there are certain platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn that are going to only give you one profile. So you have to choose. Are you Julie the business coach or Julie the life coach? Right. There are other channels where you can create multiple accounts. TikTok, Instagram, X YouTube. So you can, you know, start multiple channels and you can grow them. But every channel is like a child. It has money needs, it has, you know, needs to be fed, it needs to be watered, all that kind of stuff. So just be careful and remember, answer question number one. Is at least one of your companies paying all the bills? If you answer that question with no, I guarantee starting a second company when the first company is not paying you enough to even live is going to just dilute your energy. Okay, so that's sort of my discussion on niche and market. And with what is happening right now in the world, people want hyper specific transformational niches. I had someone write back and say, what the heck is a hyper specific transformational niche? It's a before and after state. Okay, so if you think about someone before they've met you, they've met your solution. After they've met you and they've met your solution. Right. I have a client, her name is Trina, and she's a YouTube expert. And so she teaches people how to leverage YouTube. And YouTube is one of the highest leveraged social platforms that you can get involved in. There's a lot of advantages to YouTube, even though it's a little bit of a heavier lift than some of the other platforms at first glance. Or if you don't like video, it might be, you might be annoyed by it. But before people meet Trina, they might be on a hamster wheel on Instagram, just, you know, Feeding the algorithm, trying to make reels, doing stories, being exhausted. Well, after they meet Trina or after they run into Trina's solution, which is a playlist funnel, they've got a very concrete plan for a weekly video that's very strategic in a playlist funnel that is generating interested customers for your business. Even if you're only getting 20 or 25 views on that video, you don't have to have a giant channel that is hyper specific. And there is a clear transformation between the person that's burned out on reels and the person that's happily producing one weekly video and starting to see the fruits of their label labor. That's a hyper specific transformational niche. Okay. And notice that she's talking about a specific type of playlist in YouTube. Okay. So if you are like, oh, I can't, I can't narrow it down, I, I can't be known for something so, so specific because I'm going to be trapped. That is a you problem, right? That is your own mindset getting in the way of what is going to make your business successful. So that is a non negotiable in my opinion. You have to have a hyper specific transformational nich. Just do. And sometimes it takes a little while to test. Last example I'll leave you with. Even though I'm not really testing a new niche, but with AI coming out, I did this workshop called the Second brain. Right. There was a lot of people talking about AI. I am not new or different different. But what do I bring to the table? I bring psychology to the table and I also bring productivity to the table. I'm known for doing things that are simple and that are going to get results. And so people have trusted me with like sacred time and the paper whiteboards and all of these like little hacks. And so I went into the market saying, I'm going to teach you how to use ChatGPT as a second brain and I'm going to teach you these three simple habits. And this little tiny course has just exploded and we're getting so many sales a day because it is very hyper specific and it is showing a transformational, hey, here's who you are before you met Julie and the second brain concept. And here's who you are after. Hyper specific transformational niche. I could probably build an entire business around ChatGPT as a second brain at this point. I think I could. I think I have enough evidence that the market wants it. It. Am I going to do it? Probably not. I'm busy. I have a lot of other things to do. Even though I love talking about it and I probably will put more content out there, I don't think I'm going to blow that up into its own business. But sometimes testing out those really, really hyper specific offers can give you clues into that transformational niche that you're looking for. Of course, I have the advantage of having an audience that trusts me so I can test these ideas out. Whereas if you don't have an audience, it's sort of a what comes first, chicken or the egg? So you really have to be able to commit to a niche, to a corner of that farmer's market, and you need to give it six to 12 months at a minimum of really trying to generate that audience to see how things respond. I always have told people, attach yourself to an audience, not a product. You're going to have lots of products, you're going to have lots of wins, you're going to have lots of flops. But if you can tie yourself to an audience, to a person, to a specific type of person who has a problem, you have a lot flexibility. Thanks for hanging with me. I'll talk to you soon. And there you have it, folks. Another dose of Million Dollar Grit. I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired, equipped and ready to face your own entrepreneurial journey with resolve. Remember, until next time, embrace the struggle, harness your grit and keep pushing forward. You're stronger than any challenge you face. I'm Julie and this has been Million Dollar Grit.